Tag: photography

I submitted this picture into our camera club competition tonight. It placed 1st out of 5 entries in Projected Basic.

Tonight's competition that I entered was the travel category. I entered one of my shots from Europe of the Eiffel Tower at night. Out of 9 entries in Travel Basic I placed 3rd.

The Eiffel Tower from the Palais de Chaillot at night. Paris, France.

This week's camera club competition category was "pictorial" which they use to mean "anything you want". Generally it's a good time to submit photos that don't really fall into the other categories (journalism, nature, travel, and creative). I submitted two of my pictures. Club members are placed into categories based on experience and skill (beginner, intermediate, advanced, and master). Out of 11 entries in the pictorial, projected images, basic my picture of the figurine placed 4th. Not too bad for a first-time entry.

The photography class we're taking had a field trip last week to Veterans Park in Livermore. We got up incredibly early and met at the park at 7.

We took a bunch of pictures; many of which we're still working on cleaning up. I didn't get nearly as many as I hoped that I really like. We did, however, get to see some turkeys (they were sitting in the trees! and then they flew!), and some deer, and some (what I believe are) turkey vultures warming up in the sun.

Here are some of the turkeys (I was pretty far away and without a fancy telephoto lens this was the best I could do). I tried to get closer, but those things are skittish and ran off:
The deer were a bit easier to catch, being right out in the sunlight helped:
These (I believe) turkey vultures, were just hanging out in the sunlight to warm up. They'd sit there with their wings outstretched for a long time:
I got to try for one of those fun smooth-flowing-water pictures. I need a tripod though, can't hold the camera still enough for the entire exposure:
So far my favorite picture from the shoot is this wine tub:

There's still some work I'd like to do on it to really make it nice.

Jess and I found the local camera club and signed up to be in their photography class offered through Park & Rec. The first class was last week and was a bit of overview and instruction on all the features the cameras have, what they mean, and how to adjust them.

Tonight's class was about lighting and how it will affect the quality and mood of your photos. It's pretty fun. They ask students to bring pictures each week so they can show them on the projector and provide a light critique to help us improve. Jess and I both received very favorable reviews on our pictures.

I wanted to take a composed shot from a figurine lit with candles. However, options are kind of limited in terms of what you can do when you don't own a tripod or any other fancy/handy equipment. I was able to get a really nice picture though. I used a stack of books as my tripod, and my background is the carpet and a beige throw hung over a music stand:
Jess took these two pictures of some flowers I gave her in celebration of HollyDay: